Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

THE VOC EINLEITUNG APPROACH GOES EAST
and deteriorating living conditions made
cooperation between domestic actors more
difficult. Intense struggle among different
domestic actors or ethnic groups, which also
produced violence (e.g. in Yugoslavia), did not
leave room for stability and a complementary
institutional system. In war-torn countries
(e.g. Azerbaijan, Georgia) and countries with
high concentrations of political power (e.g.
Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyz Republic),
powerful domestic groups actively influenced
institutional reforms (see World Bank 2002, p.
106). Influence of such actors is nothing bad,
as long as the state remains powerful enough
and will not be captured by powerful internal
business groups or oligarchs, who seek to extract
rents from the state. The composite index
of state capture 20 provides snapshot evidence
that in the year 1999 the influence of firms on
institutional and policy reforms was on average
more pronounced in SEE and the CIS as
compared to CEB (see table 4).
Table 4. Regional average of state capture among transition economies in 1999
CIS AM AZ BY GG KZ KG MD RU UA UZ
regional
average
state capture index 7 41 8 24 12 29 37 32 32 6 22.8
SEE ALB BG HR RO
state capture index 16 28 27 21 23
CEB CZ EE HU LV LT SK SI PL
state capture index 11 10 7 30 11 24 7 12 14
Source: Calculations based on Hellman./Jones/Kaufmann, 2000, p. 9.
Note: The index is constructed as the average proportion of firms responding that their businesses are directly affected by private payments
made to public officials to influence decision making in one or more of the following six institutions: parliament, the executive
apparatus, the criminal courts, the civil courts, the central bank, and political parties (Hellman/Kaumann 2001).
While dealing with institutional
change and institutional complementarity
during transition, ex-
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ternal actors should be taken into
account. Post-communist institution
building has been subject to pressure
from Western consultants, international organizations
(IMF, World Bank, USAID),
multinational corporations and foreign banks.
The EU was particularly important for
institutional reforms. 21 Although international
actors initially produced institutional and
policy similarities (best practices), at the same
time multiple conditionalities and interests
hindered coherent institutional strategies, as
well. Bartlett shows, for instance, that former